February 08, 2012

Embarking on Year 5. Introduce Yourself!

Today marks the beginning of year five of The Bitten Word. Yes, friends, it's our blogiversary!

Four years ago today, we started writing this blog to help us stick to a new year's resolution to start cooking from our food magazine subscriptions. Today, more than 600 posts later, we're still at it.

We've changed a bit over the course of the last four years. We're far more knowledgeable in the kitchen. Cooking with frequency and from a variety of sources has given us an education of sorts that we didn't expect when we started blogging.

So why do we continue to write this blog?

Well, it's actually a lot of fun to do this together. We each have our own careers, and this has been a nice place to play and learn together, spending time in the kitchen, laughing and sharing food with friends.

We continue to learn. There are still plenty of techniques we're eager to try and dishes we want to master. We love this aspect of cooking -- there's always a new recipe for roast chicken that we want to try. We love learning more about photography, and love seeing how much our photos have improved over the last four years. (Seriously, take a gander at the photos from our first month. WOOF.)

And we still love food magazines. Each month we read at least 10 food magazines, and we still get excited when they show up in our mailbox. Even when we're critical of a recipe, we're still on the side of the magazines. And we want you to subscribe to food magazines. We're not writing this blog so that you will cancel your subscriptions. Rather, we're writing this blog as a fun companion to the magazines, and hopefully even expose you to some magazines you haven't sampled on your own. If you don't have one, get yourself a subscription. But take it from us, it's probably not a good idea to get 10 subscriptions.

What we want out of Year 5 of The Bitten Word.

We're going to continue to try new dishes. Most of them will continue to be from food magazines. We'll also share a fare smattering of our own creations this year. At the same time, we're going to tell you about other food we're eating, books we're reading, share more videos and introduce you to people we love.

What we want from you.

Almost every time we've ever been interviewed about the blog, we've been asked some version of, "What's your favorite thing about writing The Bitten Word?"

We should probably give a better interview and mix up our answer from time to time, but we always say the same thing: hearing from our readers. It's true.

Your comments and emails, tweets and posts have been the absolute highlight of our experience as bloggers. You've shared your own hilarious stories, favorite recipes, heartbreaking news, restaurant tips, kitchen rants and from the looks of the comments, a lot of you are selling prescription medications at rock-bottom prices. (Just kidding -- we delete the spam comments.)

So if you have a moment, give us a blogiversary gift and introduce yourself. For those of you reading from feeds, you can do it here. It doesn't matter what you say. Tell us about where you live, or what you like to cook, or something you're hoping to learn this year. Tell us what you want to hear about from us this year, recommend a book, or share the best thing you ever eaten. Just introduce yourself. We can't wait to hear from you!

Comments

Embarking on Year 5. Introduce Yourself!

Today marks the beginning of year five of The Bitten Word. Yes, friends, it's our blogiversary!

Four years ago today, we started writing this blog to help us stick to a new year's resolution to start cooking from our food magazine subscriptions. Today, more than 600 posts later, we're still at it.

We've changed a bit over the course of the last four years. We're far more knowledgeable in the kitchen. Cooking with frequency and from a variety of sources has given us an education of sorts that we didn't expect when we started blogging.

So why do we continue to write this blog?

Well, it's actually a lot of fun to do this together. We each have our own careers, and this has been a nice place to play and learn together, spending time in the kitchen, laughing and sharing food with friends.

We continue to learn. There are still plenty of techniques we're eager to try and dishes we want to master. We love this aspect of cooking -- there's always a new recipe for roast chicken that we want to try. We love learning more about photography, and love seeing how much our photos have improved over the last four years. (Seriously, take a gander at the photos from our first month. WOOF.)

And we still love food magazines. Each month we read at least 10 food magazines, and we still get excited when they show up in our mailbox. Even when we're critical of a recipe, we're still on the side of the magazines. And we want you to subscribe to food magazines. We're not writing this blog so that you will cancel your subscriptions. Rather, we're writing this blog as a fun companion to the magazines, and hopefully even expose you to some magazines you haven't sampled on your own. If you don't have one, get yourself a subscription. But take it from us, it's probably not a good idea to get 10 subscriptions.

What we want out of Year 5 of The Bitten Word.

We're going to continue to try new dishes. Most of them will continue to be from food magazines. We'll also share a fare smattering of our own creations this year. At the same time, we're going to tell you about other food we're eating, books we're reading, share more videos and introduce you to people we love.

What we want from you.

Almost every time we've ever been interviewed about the blog, we've been asked some version of, "What's your favorite thing about writing The Bitten Word?"

We should probably give a better interview and mix up our answer from time to time, but we always say the same thing: hearing from our readers. It's true.

Your comments and emails, tweets and posts have been the absolute highlight of our experience as bloggers. You've shared your own hilarious stories, favorite recipes, heartbreaking news, restaurant tips, kitchen rants and from the looks of the comments, a lot of you are selling prescription medications at rock-bottom prices. (Just kidding -- we delete the spam comments.)

So if you have a moment, give us a blogiversary gift and introduce yourself. For those of you reading from feeds, you can do it here. It doesn't matter what you say. Tell us about where you live, or what you like to cook, or something you're hoping to learn this year. Tell us what you want to hear about from us this year, recommend a book, or share the best thing you ever eaten. Just introduce yourself. We can't wait to hear from you!